Initiative could shut down Diablo Canyon nuclear plant

November 26, 2011

A California ballot initiative proposed for next fall would force Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear power plants to immediately shut down causing electric rates to skyrocket, rolling blackouts, and billions of dollars in economic losses each year, according to a recent report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The two nuclear power plants provide 16 percent of the state’s electricity, the report says.

The Nuclear Waste Act of 2012 would prohibit the generation of nuclear power in the state until the federal government approves a site for the permanent disposal of high-level nuclear waste and a nuclear fuel rod reprocessing plant is in operation.

Fiscal impacts of the rolling blackouts would include reduced productivity and loss of jobs, the report says. In addition, the state could be liable for more than $4 billion if the plants are permanently closed because of the utilities ability to recover capital investments under current law.

Ben Davis Jr. of Santa Cruz, proposed the initiative which was approved for signature-gathering last week.

To qualify for the November 2012 ballot, supporters of the initiative need to collect 504,760 signatures by April 16, according to the California secretary of state.

120 Comments

The first whale watching trip I took out of Morro Bay (around 1993) was southward towards Point Buchon. There was a point on the trip when you could see Diablo Canyon on the right and the Morro Bay Power Plant stacks on the left.
It was back when PG&E owned both plants (Dynegy now owns the MBPP. This was also back when MBPP burned fuel oil, diesel, kerosene, whatever was handy).
I remember distinctly that smoke was pouring out of all three stacks and probably rising 1,500 or more feet into the air.
At Diablo Canyon, there was not one whiff of emissions, no smoke, no steam, nothing. You could tell it was running because the cooling water was being discharged into Diablo Cove.
I thought to myself, which is worse environmentally? With Diablo there is the possibility of a disaster and release of radiation. How much of a possibility is up for debate. Suffice it to say that if disaster strikes, we are in deep doo-doo.
But with the MBPP, the pollution being emitted was as plain as day. At that time, it was a no-brainer to me which one I’d prefer to have around — Diablo Canyon.
I find it difficult to imagine something that will still be deadly 1,000s of years from now. But seeing that smoke (now they only burn natural gas, so it’s mostly steam) at the MBPP, it’s not hard to imagine choking on it. Shoot you could see it when the soot settled on your boat or your car!
And while I’m not entirely sold on the idea of global warming (climate change, whatever) I don’t need to believe in it, to know that we should cut our use of oil (fossil fuels) if for no other reason than to cut air pollution.
So I’m all for solar and wind generation. Frankly, if Jimmy Carter had won re-election, we’d be much further advanced in these areas. But when Carter (say what you will about his foreign policy, his alternative energy ideas were spot-on) lost to Reagan, the Gipper put us right back on the crude oil highway and we’ve not been able to get off of it.
Consider this, if solar/wind power rises to the forefront for our energy supply, how long before Exxon, Mobile, Chevron, Shell, B.P., PG&E, etc… or some other mega conglomerate buys up those solar companies?
Already, one of the solar farms in Carrizo Plains is being bought by NRG Energy and it isn’t even built yet. Do you think NRG would spend a billion dollars on an energy plant like this if it wasn’t sure it will make that investment back plus billions more in profit?
When that happens, we’ll be right back at the mercy of the big energy companies, only now they’ll rob us blind with solar/wind power instead of gasoline, natural gas and oil.
I hope this nuclear measure makes it to the ballot. That way the people can settle this once and for all.
I just hope that if it does, and the measure fails, that the nuclear critics will accept it (not likely though).

While I think nuclear is the most efficient generation of electricity we have, consider this:

At it’s worst, should the Morro Bay (or any fuel-burning) facility experience a disaster (explosion, earthquake, terrorist, flood, whatever), it could always be shut down and the pollution would dissolve in the biosphere instantly (geologically speaking). However, if the same we to happen to the nuclear facility, there is no instant removal from the biosphere. That nasty half-life is REALLY long. Chernobyl has not gotten any better all these years later, nor will it for generations and generations.

Probably the same will happen with Fukishima. In short, nuclear is risky should something bad happen, which is not the case for any other means of generation we currently use.

I’d love to see the waste and spent rods loaded aboard an American-made rocket and fired into the sun (I hear it can handle nuclear waste). Heck, even today’s NASA might be able to hit the sun from here.

Wow r0y, I’m pretty surprised by your post and my gosh may lightning strike me,,,I agree with you. And OMG I even like your theory regarding sending the waste to the sun, interesting idea not sure if I agree but it’s interesting.

Now this is pretty uncomfortable and icky r0y, can we just go back to arguing with each other, it just doesn’t feel right :)

To all the mass hysteria types posting here that act like nothing is happening in renewables.lets cut through the bull.

We are currently at 11.6% of energy from renewables (from utilitys) as of 2009. That is to increase to 33% by 2020. That is almost a 200% increase from where we are at now!!!! That is why you see/saw the big push for Solar in California valley. PG&E and others have nine years to meet this.

Now I know the hysteria crowd will complain that this isn’t 100% from renewables. True. This isn’t going to happen over night but they are progressing that way. It isn’t stagnate as some here make it seem.

Meh… Solar’s capacity factor still sucks and it’s still very expensive. Wind’s capacity factor is even worse (but, at least it’s dirt cheap). Hydroelectric (which makes up the bulk of the US’s “renewable” power generation) is maxed out. There aren’t too many other places to build dams out here. There’s some room for growth in geothermal in central Nevada, but that’s also rather limited. I suppose we will get more methane-recovery peakers at landills. Which is nice… But not really a replacement or 4 Gw @ 95% capacity factor.

Even if demand remains flat and the growth in renewable is able to displace existing plants, I’d decommission coal-fired and other fossil fuel plants before I’d decommission Diablo and San Onofre.

Mary I use Fluoresent and L.E.D. lighting all over our house. Energy effecient T.V.s This past summer we use the A.C. (mind you I live in Paso) two different days for about two and a half hours each day. We make sure lights aren’t on in rooms we aren’t in. Mary if I could cut 16% I would be thrilled but honey there isn’t anything left to cut.

It’s the same with the water arguement. We are beat over the head that we don’t conserve. Well since I was first told this in 1977, I take short showers, watch how many flushes I use. Water my lawn only twice a week. What else is there!!!!?? Again I am FED UP with this LIBERAL clap trap arguement that myself and others are wasteful etc. It is uttter B.S. koolaid handed out by the left!!!!

That’s right, there’s no way to cut back, it doesn’t matter. There’s plenty of water and plenty of fossil fuels to go around so we need not worry about the future, as you said, we’ve all had too much kool aid. All those water shortages and high fuel charges are just ‘LIBERAL clap’. I know ‘it’s all Obama’s fault’ (we haven’t heard that one yet).

Take a reality pill. I have also cut back. All of my electronics are on circuit breakers that I turn off when not using. When reading my electric bills and comparing years, my usage has gone down dramatically over the last few years. The problem is that PG&E has raised my rates so much that although I’m not using as much power I’m paying more now.

You are so typical. You just don’t get the idea of conservation, because you live for today and don’t care about future generations and I find that very selfish. That is the con way though, I wouldn’t expect anything more.

WOW. You see typical liberal responce. You just tell them that you are conserving but it still isn’t good enough. So what is enough for you? Do we go back to living in trees? Because that is about what you are proposing. Boy talk about just not getting it.

Another point on this. I don’t know of ANYONE that I know personnelly that hasn’t cut back in some way on water, gas and electric. You don’t own the moral high ground. We (a lot of Californian’s) are conserving.

I’ll give you this one BTDT. I shouldn’t lump everyone into one basket. Many people even some righties are conserving. That being said if they’re browns/righties then I believe that they are conserving to save money but I don’t care, as long they’re helping the environment then I don’t care what their motives are.

It’s not a question of the “high road” or the “low road.” It’s the “sane road.”

We cannot leave our nuclear waste for our children, grandchildren, on down to deal with. We have to do the right thing and get storage facilities and locations identified and built now.

We know the government and PG&E won’t do it unless we hold a knife to their throats (metaphorically speaking).

We have to force them to do the right thing. Unfortunately, that means passing an initiative to force closure of the NPPs until the facilities are open for business.

Look what happened to Japan with Fukushima. They aren’t admitting it, but it is going to take decades and decades to get their economy back on track–if they ever can.

If we had a nuclear incident even half of what Fukushima had, it would destroy our economy for good, plus make all of us who live local to Diablo start asking for tips from the folks who were evacuated from the Fukushima prefecture.

The NCSD customers were able to decrease their water consumption by 14%, and that was just with public education, workshops, etc. There was no conservation-forcing increase in rates involved. They did it because they knew it was the right thing to do, and because some of the options actually made their lives easier.

So, conservation of 16% of energy (or water) is doable.

We’ve screwed around too long now waiting for PG&E and our government to do the right thing. We have no choice but to put them in a lock-hold and force them to do it.

The most important–and the easiest way to save water– is to remove the lawn and install water-efficient plants. On average, outdoor water use accounts for over 50% of a home’s water use, and irrigation of the law accounts for over 60% of the water used outdoors.

Mary, you and I and a few others on here could easily cut back 16% from our energy usage each month. It’s the other 30+ million people in the state that don’t give a rats tail about conservation and live somewhere else. Until some other power source is online and ready to crank out the kilo-watt hours, we don’t have much of a choice but to keep Diablo and San Onofre up and running.

Oh, the other 30+million will get with the program when the price increases occur. Raising the water rates will produce water conservation, and the higher and quicker the rates are raised, the more water customers save and the quicker they do it.

That is exactly what is happening at the Nipomo CSD now. The BOD knew years ago that, on average, the Nipomo Mesa water users were using about twice as much as nature can naturally replenish. But, because of political reasons (they were afraid of being voted out of office), they didn’t want to raise water rates enough to force water conservation.

The BOD refused to institute water rates that would encourage water conservation.

Time marcheth on…

The water conservation peep they had at the time was able to help NCSD’s customers save 14%–without conservation-forcing water rates.

However, she has since disappeared, and no one there now knows much about water conservation. They are just going to slam away at their customers with the high water rates.

If they would have started seriously pushing water conservation a few years ago, they could have made much more progress by now. But they waited until it became.

Back to talking about the initiative…if the plants get shut down, the electric companies that get their power from the plants will raise the rates, BIG TIME. That will force California peeps to decrease their energy use.

I am okay if they sut it all down
The difficulties will bring out the best inovations or compensation in all of us to readjust.
I have no problem with a wood stove-propane stove, black pipeline water heating, solar-battery-AC inverting, DC appliances, it would be fun.

I am okay if they do not shut it down
The problem with “spent” fuel rods” we could bury it along the borders between Mexico and the Texas, Arizona, and California borders.
Massive warning and notice must be given on both sides of the border, anyone trying to cross will be toasted!

Not a liberal or conservative issue from my point of view. More like common sense and survival instincts. I’m a conservative and I say, carpe diem, let’s “shut ’em down.” Nuclear is a lie. Not economically viable without public subsidies for normal start up costs and public indemnification for the potential catastrophic downside. What coal, gas, hydro, solar, wind plant can poison an entire hemisphere when humans do what humans do, make mistakes? Let’s get to work cleaning up the global poisons that have already been released from NPP normal operations, fuel & waste cycles and accidents, and not further burden multiple future generations with a greater mess than we’ve already created. Come on, how can any person, liberal or conservative, justify obligating future generations to multiple millennia managing nuclear waste produced from a nuclear power plant with a 40-year operating life? Hoping we can see past politics and propaganda to recognize the common sense and moral issue that we have an opportunity to resolve, for our children’s sake.

The environmental crazies want to shut down nuclear power, the environmental crazies want to shut down fossil fuels, the environmental crazies want to shut down wind power because a bird might fly into the blade, the environmental crazies want to shut down solar power because it might upset a rodent. Anybody get the message here.

Ben Davis’ ballot initiative, if passed, would hold Californians responsible for the “spent” (but still radioactive) fuel rods left over from the energy production at California’s two nuclear power plants: San Onofre and Diablo Canyon.

The initiativet is basically a “no-pay-no-play” requirement: California cannot run its two nuclear power plants (NPPs) if it does not have permanent storage for the spent fuel in California.

America–especially the west coast residents–is facing having to pay a huge price for Japan’s corrupt unwillingness to hold its own nuclear energy development and production energy accountable for its own “spent” fuel rods.

Some of us on the west coast are already being exposed to radioactivity from the Fukushima disaster, a direct result of the Japanese government’s failure to require adequate safety measures in the planning, construction, operation and emergency response.

Fukushima’s “spent” fuel rods were housed inappropriately and, as a result, there was a nuclear catastrophe many say goes far beyond that experienced from the Chernobyl melt-down.

Ben Davis’ initiative, if passed, would hold California accountable for the permanently dealing with the extremely dangerous “spent” fuel which results from the production of energy for 16% of Californians.

That is an extremely reasonable requirement. Yet the whiners who seem incapable of accepting responsibility for their own needs, and of taking responsible for the results associated with the electricity they use, expect someone else to pay for it. Even after Fukushima…they still want the “nanny-state,” or anyone and everyone else, to take care of the nuclear waste which results from using nuclear power to produce electricity.

Leaving the “spent” fuel rods in Fukushima-level storage facilities is making the entire world pay for the risks associated with producing the energy Diablo Canyon produces.

Sorry. No more free lunches. No more shoving our failure to take care of our own nuclear waste onto future generations. The time for energy welfare, where we reap the positives of having energy produced by nuclear power plants while refusing to take the financial and moral responsibilities associated with NPPs, is over.

Spot on. It has to end, we can’t keep doing this, we can’t keep waste that will be around for the next couple of thousand years knowing that we can’t handle it in a safe manner. It is irresponsible and stupid. The only way to do it just do it, no screwing around just stop producing nuke waste and that’s it, no matter what it takes. And this doesn’t even include the fact that this d*mn plant sits on an active earthquake fault.

1) Radiation exposure along the west coast of the United States was so minimal that it was barely detectable. Remember, the lowest short-time dose ever linked to negative health effects was 100 mSv. Nobody outside of the plant was exposed to anywhere near that amount of radiation.
2) Worse than Chernobyl? By what measure?
Certainly not in immediate cost to human life. 31 People died in the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl. A significant number of others were exposed an unhealthy dose of ionizing radiation. 4 people died at Fukushima. 1 man died as a result of falling debris during the earthquake. Two others died in the turbine hall when it flooded as a result the tsunami. 1 man died as a result of a heart-attack during the cleanup operation. 4 is fewer than 31.
Amount of radioactive material released? We don’t see too many Bio-Robots on the roofs of the surrounding buildings at Fukushima. At Chernobyl, nearly 30% of the core material was ejected into the surrounding area. Even with the contaminated material coming off of the spent fuel rods for 4 reactors (more on that in a moment), I very highly doubt that the amount of material released is anywhere near the amount released at Chernobyl?
On-site Radiation dose-rates? Not even close. Which is why we will probably never see a single radiological death from Fukushima.
Same goes for dose-rates off-site too.
3) The fuel rods that contributed to the Fukushima disaster were in a set of tanks that were immediately next to the reactors. These rods will always be hot for some time after being pulled from the reactor, that’s simply endemic to the design of light-water reactors. This ‘decay heat’ is also the reason that the reactor suffered a meltdown after the failure of external cooling. Once these rods have cooled significantly, they were moved to a long-term storage pond away from the reactor. This storage pond caused no trouble at Fukushima.
4) The reason we are dealing with this issue at all is obstructionism and NIMBYism. It seems that people are willing to fight tooth and nail to prevent a nuclear waste dump from being built anywhere near them. Add to this our fear of commercial fuel reprocessing (which has prompted us to restrict ourselves to a Uranium enrichment technology that is more primitive than what the Iranians are using to try get enough material to build a bomb) and Bill Clinton’s decision to cut the IFR program and it’s easy to see why we don’t have a good solution for this. Quite frankly, I don’t think groups like Greenpeace or the SLO Mothers for More Oil Wars Peace even want a good re-processing technology to exist. They are so focused on shutting down all things nuclear that they oppose attempts to fix their supposed grievances against nuclear power.

@ amusselm – Contrary to the info the public has been fed (and you recklessly quote) about Fukushima fall-out, we have been impacted. I am in the Santa Monica Mountains, 30 miles NW of Los Angeles and 5 miles inland from Malibu, and I sent off some soils samples from the canyons to a private lab for radioisotope analysis. Turns out that cesium contamination of soil in my area totals 8.27 bq/kg, of which 6.46 bq/kg, or 78% is attributable to Fukushima! This is assuming the 1:1 ratio we’ve seen throughout (Japanese and US readings) for 134:137. For those of you who are not aware, Cesium 134 is the Fukushima signature because it has a short half life, and if present, could only have come from Fukushima. Folks, these samples were taken 8596.10 km, or 5341.37 miles from Fukushima, Japan, proof that NPP melt-downs know no boundaries and that the entire world will live with the repercussions of this disaster. God have mercy on the Japanese who did not have the Pacific Ocean separating them from the melt-down. In light of the fact that the multiple melt-throughs are still ongoing and contamination is spreading in the atmosphere and the sea, that temperatures in 2 reactors are spiking today and Tepco acknowledges the imminent risk of additional hydrogen explosions, God have mercy on us all.

Let’s just work together to help (read force) the Japanese to resolve this ongoing crisis, learn from the inherent and sometimes unmanageable risks that managing nuclear power production presents and move on to a better idea. This one doesn’t work.

Read up on what exactly a Becquerel is. Then, consider a typical banana. According to that link a banana has about 31 Bq of radioactive output. Since 1 kg ~= 2.2 lbs… That’s, what… 5 bananas? 5*31= 155 Bq/kg for bananas. That’s about 18 times the level of radiation per mass that’s coming from your soil sample.

So, yes, by your own numbers that’s an absurdly low dose of radiation.

At some point you industry people will have to look beyond your own short-sighted interests and see the forest here. Thank you for the link, however I am perfectly aware of what a becquerel is, and your banana analogy is overused and ridiculous. Naturally-occurring K40 from those 5 bananas in no way equivalates the isotopes released by nuclear fission that we are all discussing here. As a matter of fact, that same soils sample I reference contained 323.4 bq/kg of K40. I wonder how much Cs134 & 137 and other Fukushima goodies landed on the fair shores of Morro Bay? This hasn’t just landed in my neighborhood or in Japan, it’s in your backyard where your children play too.

Turns out that the levels that my area has received are generally equivalent to the cesium load that the southern Utah downwinders received from the NTS days. Goody. If only they would have known they were exposed to an equivalent of 5 bananas… perhaps that would have alleviated their anxiety and they would not have manifested so many cases of leukemia…

My trade groups? I’m a computer programmer, not a nuclear engineer. I am not currently, nor have I ever been an employee of PG&E, although I would jump at the chance if I could. Power is a far more interesting field than web development.

Now, why is 323.4 bq/kg coming from the K40 somehow less of an issue than ~8 bq/kg coming from Cs134 & 137? I know that Cs134 & 137 emit a few more gamma rays, but even with the appropriate weighting factor, that’s still a much smaller dose.

The study you cite clearly states the increase in cancer rate was due to exposure to I 131, not Cs 137 (which is just a handy way of mapping the fallout, since 25% of it hasn’t decayed yet). I 131 has a half-life of about 8 days (in fact, that’s part of the reason it’s so dangerous when ingested).

Moreover, what does this have to do with fuel rod storage? Compared to a loss of primary containment in reactor #2, a bit of hot water where there was no actual fuel rod damage at the end of the day really isn’t that important. And, those fuel rod ponds are themselves completely irrelevant to long-term fuel storage. Those are going to exist even if we had a ‘permanent’ solution for dealing with the spent fuel rods (like the IFR, which burn up spent fuel rods) because the rods are too hot (temperature wise, due to decay heat) to handle. That is an unavoidable part of the light-water reactor fuel-cycle. This has NOTHING to do with the eventual fate of the spent fuel rods.

“Cesium levels hit tens of billions of becquerels at river mouth
November 25, 2011
By EISUKE SASAKI/ Staff Writer

Researchers have sounded the alarm over river water containing cesium levels at tens of billions of becquerels a day flowing into the sea near Fukushima Prefecture, site of the crippled nuclear power plant.

A joint study by Kyoto University and the University of Tsukuba, among other entities, estimated that water at the mouth of the Abukumagawa river running through the prefecture was contaminated with cesium levels of about 50 billion becquerels a day.

They called for immediate and continued monitoring of the situation.

The daily radiation levels are equivalent to the total of amount of cesium in low-level contaminated water released into the sea in April by Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

There’s this new-fangled thing called “Google.” You might want to check it out. You can do searches for information on topics all over the internet! Really! http://tinyurl.com/7zgqjpy

1. Unfortunately, Japan has not been forthcoming about the amount of radiation exposure experienced secondary to Fukushima-D….or much of anything else associated with the disaster. Indeed, there has been an alarming lack of monitoring by the Japanese government, and citizens are now performing radiation monitoring. The media and the U.S. government have been complicit in assisting TEPCO and the Japanese governement, from Day #1, in the coverup of the true depth of the radiation danger in Japan and globally.
Safecast.org is a network of citizen and other reporting sites, mostly now in Japan but their goal is to be worldwide in the future.
(PBS story about Safecast: http://tinyurl.com/7e7j6yq).
(“Fukushima Radiation Alarms Doctors” http://tinyurl.com/6v2gxqv)
(“Fukushima: It’s much worse than you think” http://tinyurl.com/7dahj68)

Amazing what the media neglects to cover. Haven’t heard much about the hydrogen buildup recently in Fukushima units 1, 2 and 3, have you? Concern is for another hydrogen deflagration (fast turbulent flame or explosion). Here’s a discussion and demonstration of hydrogen deflagration and the implications for Fukushima: http://tinyurl.com/84nyhde

About hot particles….you are misinformed: (http://tinyurl.com/3lx6xr6) “…Washington, DC – October 31, 2011 – Today Scientist Marco Kaltofen of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) presented his analysis of radioactive isotopic releases from the Fukushima accidents at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Mr. Kaltofen’s analysis confirms the detection of hot particles in the US and the extensive airborne and ground contamination in northern Japan due to the four nuclear power plant accidents at TEPCO’s Fukushima reactors. Fairewinds believes that this is a personal health issue in Japan and a public health issue in the United States and Canada….Another piece of information is that Fairewinds viewers were able to send in children’s shoes from Japan. Mr. Kaltofen has data that clearly show that the concentration of cesium on the kid’s shoelaces was astronomically high, around 80 disintegrations per second. What does that mean? Kids tie their shoes, their hands get radioactive and it goes into their G.I. tract. If it is on the ground, it is in the dust in the playground and it is in their lungs. I think that between the two, the air filters and the children’s shoes, it shows that there is a severe personal health problem in Japan that will manifest itself in cancers over the next 10 or 20 years.”
(American Public Health’s info: http://tinyurl.com/6ntlcf6)

2. There’s this new-fangled thing called “Google.” You might want to check it out. You can do searches for information on topics all over the internet! Really!

Your comment “On-site Radiation dose-rates? Not even close. Which is why we will probably never see a single radiological death from Fukushima” is delusional.

a. As noted previously, the Japanese and American governments, and the media, have been criminally negligent in their handling of distributing truthful public information about what happened at Fukushima and what we can expect in the future.

b. The effects of radiation exposure are long-term and, from one event, can be accumulative and biocentrated. For instance, the amount of radiation in the forest soil samples (25 to 45 kilometers nwest from Fukushima), in the ocean near the plant: Scientists estimate that in the first 30 days after the accident on 11 March, trees, birds and forest-dwelling mammals were exposed to daily doses up to 100 times greater – and fish and marine algae to doses several thousand times greater – than are generally considered safe. … (“Wildlife Threatened By Fukushima Radiation,” http://tinyurl.com/7x9vaj4).

3. Yes, they were not stored in a safe manner. That is the entire point of the initiative: permanent “safe” stoarge. What is your point?
We saw what can happen when pompous “it-can’t-happen-here” folks in the nuclear industry deal with the production of nuclear energy and nuclear fuel with the approach of “how much can I get away with?” The fact that Diablo has one two-lane road as access to the plant is a demonstration of the kind of risks PG&E are willing for us to take. That’s why, until California’s NPPs have permament, “safe” storage online, the NPPs should be shut down.

4. According to you, it is everybody’s fault except for the greedy corporate piggies who bribed two poorly designed facilities into action in California. Too funny–and desperate.

Your comment is a red herring. The issue is getting permament, “safe” storage for “spent” nuclear fuel. Until that is accomplished, the facilities producing the ‘spent” fuel must be shut down so we don’t keep accumulating more “spent” fuel that can cause us heinous problems in the long term.

the fukishima fuel was stored in pools not in dry storage. Diablo has both wet and dry storage in operation at this time. If you shut down Diablo we still have to bear the cost of storing the fuel both wet and dry and not reap the benefit of generating electricity at a reasonable cost. The dam has already broken on this one. It doesnt take anymore space or risk to store 40 years of waste than it does to store 4 years of waste. Again the fukushima level storage was wet storage in spent fuel pools. We should have a national site for storage i agree. Tell Harry Reid, he is the one who shut down Yucca Mtn (after taxpayers spent about 17 Billion dollars on it.) Now every site stores their own fuel. But again, it is already underway.

Who says there is no increased risk or space to store more spent fuel?

Here’s a clue for you: It isn’t Nevada’s responsibility to store the “spent” fuel from California. Don’t blame the senator from Nevada because we don’t have the ability to take care of our own nuclear mess we have created.

Here’s another clue for you: the nuclear industry cannot be trusted to do anything it is not forced to do. If we shut down the plants, it will give them the inspiration they need to get ‘er done. Also, shutting them down will stop the increase in accumulation of “spent” fuel just waiting for some catastrophe–intended or natural–to happen.

I’m with Mary, how can you make a claim that it doesn’t matter in regards to safety how much spent fuel is stored there, that sounds crazy.

Harry Reid wasn’t the only one that didn’t want those spent fuel, most Nevadians didn’t want our nuke waste and why should they? How arrogant of us to think it’s right to ship our cr@p to another state. BTW, the Nev. repubs didn’t want our nuke waste either, it was pretty unanimous.

No more welfare for California’s energy-sucking lifestyle. If Californians cannot accept the responsibility for permanently dealing with the nuclear waste from the NPPs they depend on for 16% of their energy production, then just shut down the NPPs.